Objects

How many of you have seem someone put a fern on fabric and silk screen over it as a resist? OK, you can all put your hands down. Now for something a little different.

I know how much I love "eyelash" on a Gelli plate so I thought I'd try it as a resist with dye.

Eyelash on a white background is very boring so after pulling all four prints, I went back with a credit car and thickened chartreuse dye. By that time the "first strike" principle was firmly in place (The first color to strike the prepped fabric with strike and hold even if you apply other colors over it)

Much nicer

Now I picked up the eyelash coated in purple dye and moved it to a new spot and pulled turquoise

Here I picked up the purple and turquoise covered eyelash and moved it yet again pulling chartreuse

And one last move with tri-colored dye covered eyelast to a fourth position and I pulled medium blue. Very organic. Makes me think of worms or blood vessels

Interfacing Stencil

This is a real interesting silk screen technique. I first saw it on Jane Dunnewold's website under her tutorials. It is no longer there but I copied and pasted it into a word document then saved it. I will try to explain each step of creating the stencil and show pictures.

The stencil is made from medium weight Pellon interfacing. The premise is that after MANY pulls with thickened dye, the dye will eventually go through the Pellon. I will cut some shapes into the Pellon to allow the dye to go through on the first pull and I will use hot soy wax to block certain areas to resist the dye. Here is a photo.

So you can see the holes that were cut and the lines in hot soy wax that will resist the dye

The premise is that the dye will go through the holes and gradually go through the Pellon except where the soy wax was applied. Each pull I add more of another color and the prints start to change. The circles (holes) change on the first pull and the Pellon part eventually change color.

Above you see immediately that I added red and in the bottom two prints the "body" of the print (the Pellon part) eventually changes.

This the Pellon stencil AFTER all the prints are made and the stencil has been washed. You would never believe it looked black before I rinsed it.

This technique could be used to show progression, development, decay, the passage of time; use your imagination.

Soy Wax Resist

Nothing gets my heart beating faster than soy wax and thickened dye. I had this great idea for a soy wax resist pattern. One of the hurdles in Silk Screening is ending up with a discrete amount of dye on your cloth instead of a huge colored square. I think that is what I loved about the thin line tape resist from last week - just thin lines of color.

I started out with my electric skillet and my jaggedly cut foam paint brush. I've been using this brush for years and I still find it gives me lines I always love.

Soy wax in place and I'm loving it.

Pinned tightly. I remembered!!

Two colors on

I really like the way this came out with the four colors but I want to try it again on a huge piece of fabric placing the screen randomly hither and thither.

I just set the screen aside without washing it and it is ready to play another day.

Stencils

I want to yawn when I think of stencils. I think they are great for production as in many copies of one thing but really, when do I use that. I have demonstrated using stencils many times but of course I can't find those pictures but I did find these.

For this post I wanted to try something different and a bit more challenging. 

I started out with this picture and used an X-acto knife to cut out the image. 

Wasn't I surprised when 3 pieces were still sitting on my desk. See the three pieces between the birds legs? Well, I had to lay out the big stencil and fit those three pieces back into the picture. Then I laid the silk screen on it and with just the faint set dot of Elmer's school glue, attached the three pieces to the screen with that dab of glue.

This was actually the very first screen I did with Judith and I just threw down some soda soaked fabric that had been mashed into a bag from last year and pulled a print. WRONG. The fabric was so wrinkled that the print was a mess. I got out my T-pins and pulled it taunt. I "tried" to place the screen in the exact same spot again. Right, like anyone can do that. I only got an echo around the right birds beak. Lots of missing dye. Live and learn and isn't it much better that I do all the stupid things and tell you about it than having to do them yourself?

They were pretty bland so after pulling a few prints on white fabric, I grabbed my credit card and went to town with the thickened dye. BIG improvement. The actual birds are about 7" across and would make a great book cover, incense/balsam fir pillow or a pin cushion. I would want to add some stitch or possibly stitch details like wings and shadows.

Washed and dryed

Much to my amazement, I really like these. I think it is the organic backgrounds.

Tape Resist

I've done tape resists and I've done tape resists, but this last one I did was really cool. I usually take a strip of tape and tear it jaggedly down the length to give me some interesting edges.

This time I decided to try something really different and it turned out much easier to set up on the screen.

I took out blue painters tape twice the length of my screen and taped it to my cutting mat.

I cut three long wavy lines with an X-acto knife then cut the length in half giving me 6 pieces to work with on the screen.

 

Absolutely love this and I could place the strips of tape very close together giving me thin lines of color.

Turquoise and chartreuse dye, YUM!

Welcome to December

This is a month when so many people are busy preparing for the holidays. I hope you will have time to check out my posts on a dozen uses for a silk screen. I really had to search my mind for an actual dozen but here they are...

One of the things I have learned about silk screens and their many uses is that each technique produces and effect not attainable any other way.

I want to start with a technique that I have found to be very misunderstood by so many people in my workshops. That technique is flour paste resist. Whenever I mention flour paste resist, I hear people groan, "It's so boring". I beg to differ. When you start to scribe into the fine layer of dried paste, tiny bits of paste come off in a very organic way. Also when setting up the screen, tiny voids sometime occur when the paste fails to seal one tiny opening in the weft and weave of the screens. This produces tiny dots of color when the screen is pulled.

Let's start with a silk screen. If you would like to make your own, please check out this free tutorial. 


 I started out by placing a small piece of waxed paper on my counter with the screen in this position.

I put some white flour in a bowl and added enough water to create a pancake batter consistency. I used a steel whisk and cold water to make it very smooth.

Next I used my squeegee to apply a relatively thin film of paste on the screen. This is a bit more of a challenge than it sounds. Getting just the right thickness may take a few tries. You want coverage but not too thick and not so thin you can see through it. I took a picture of my screen when it was covered and the waxed paper had been carefully remove while it was still wet but the actual screen had strange stains of it that didn't affect the use but would be a distraction. The photo below is the dried screen after scratching in my design with a sharp wooden (bamboo) skewer. You want to scratch hard enough to remove the dried paste but not so hard you damage the screen. When you look at the design you can see the scratchy organic feel of the image.

Believe it or not I used turquoise, chartreuse and purple dye. Was it the lighting?? Anyway, I pulled the screen id various positions including on point (diamond shaped). I really like the organic feel of flour paste resists.

Close-up

And here it is batched washed and ironed.

Here are a few old prints from flour paste resist.